In Their Own Words with Kostas Orginos

Konstantinos "Kostas" Orginos, a joint faculty member with JLab's Theory Center and the College of William and Mary, is a recipient of a DOE Office of Science Outstanding Junior Investigator grant.

I spent my first five years on the island of Andros, Greece, in a small village called Vouni. Since the local school had only one teacher for all six elementary grades, my mother took my brother and me to Athens to attend a better school. My father was captain of an oil tanker, so he was away a great deal. My father's choice of profession had followed the traditional path of educated young men on the island. My mother's father followed the other option – available to the less educated – he had emigrated to America. It seems that, despite all the education I've had, I have followed my grandfather's path, since I too, have come to America.

In Greece, by the time you are in 10th grade you have to select your career path so you can take the appropriate courses and exams for a university education. By the time you're admitted to a university, your decision has long been final and changing your mind is not really an option. In my case that was not a problem, I had known since I was in sixth grade that I wanted to be a physicist. The private school I attended had a wonderful lab where we performed fascinating experiments. Being able to study and understand the physical world seemed the most amazing thing to me.

After graduating from the University of Patras, I came to Brown University in August 1991 to attend graduate school. The day before I arrived in Providence, Hurricane Bob had slammed across New England, so I spent my first day in America barricaded in the house with no electricity. Although I had studied English for years in Greece, I initially struggled with the language and the culture. Living in Providence did not help the situation, since the heavy local accent made it very hard for me to understand the people around me. A fellow grad student from Korea was the only one who had the patience to talk with me and we soon became good friends.

It was at that time that I met my wife, Lily, also from Greece, a Brown grad student in classics. When we got married we knew that it would be extremely difficult to get academic jobs in the same geographical area, let alone the same institution, and that we might have to sacrifice living together while we each pursued our own career paths.

The Sims Side of Protons
Konstantinos Orginos is building a simulated universe. But unlike The Sims, his virtual world won't have nosy neighbors and yappy dogs. It will, however, be populated by the very particles that make up these everyday things. The goal is to understand how these particles, such as protons and neutrons, interact to build matter.

Orginos was named an Outstanding Junior Investigator by the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Physics in 2007. Along with the recognition came a $110,000 grant for each of three years to build a cluster computer with 192 processors (24 eight-processor nodes). He plans to combine these processors with others to build a 96-node cluster at The College of William and Mary.

The goal of the research is to build a description of protons and neutrons from the theory that describes the building blocks of these particles: Quantum Chromodynamics. QCD describes how particles called quarks and gluons build protons and neutrons. The computer will use the theory to provide calculations of how protons and neutrons interact. It's hoped that the simulations will help physicists understand, for the first time, how a simple nucleus is made in terms of the fundamental theory of QCD.

And that's what we did for almost eight years. She first worked at the University of Virginia, while I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona; she then taught at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., and I served my second stint as a postdoc at Brookhaven National Lab. This was a great improvement, as we were only about five hours apart. A couple of years later she had a sabbatical; during that time we lived together and our son, Nikolas, was born. After Lily returned to Williams, I was able to get a position at MIT, so we were able to reduce further the distance between us.

In 2005, we were happily surprised to have both been offered teaching positions at William & Mary, in my case as a joint faculty member with the Jefferson Lab Theory Center. I cannot tell you how extraordinary it seems to us to have our family united under one roof.

Receiving one of the Department of Energy’s Outstanding Junior Investigator awards last year was a great honor. It's a highly prestigious award and I knew how hard it is to get it, as this was my second try. Having $330,000 to spend over a period of three years mostly means that I'll be able to hire a post-doc to help with my research and set in motion my research agenda for the next few years. This is a very exciting step for my career.

My wife and I now live in Williamsburg. We have since had a second child, our daughter Anna. Lily is up for tenure this year and I split my week between the college and the Jefferson Lab Theory Group. Although I have given up swimming, which was my favorite hobby, I have a new one that I share with my wife: taking care of our two small children. Our weekends are spent chasing them around and doing fun things with them.

As told to Judi Tull
JLab feature writer